


Every Day

by AtropaAzraelle (Polyoxyethylene)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Healing, M/M, Wounds, gladnis week day 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 16:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12963813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyoxyethylene/pseuds/AtropaAzraelle
Summary: Every day they grew stronger, every day they survived.Written for the Gladnis Week Day 6 prompt: Battle Wounds.





	Every Day

The rooms in the Three Z's Motel always smelled, to Ignis' well refined nose, suspiciously fusty. The paint was peeling off the walls, the ceilings were nicotine stained, or perhaps it was merely damp colouring the cheap tiles such an inviting shade of smoker's lung yellow, and Ignis suspected the place hadn't been decorated since the television had been installed, sometime before Ignis was born.

Still, it was a hotel, and not a tent, and the safety of an outpost and people, and not merely a havenstone. Ignis enjoyed camping, he really did, but he enjoyed it in small doses, and breaking up their nights protected from the elements by thin canvas with other nights on beds that were raised off the floor was the best way to do it. Even when said bed was raised off the floor in a hotel best described as dilapidated.

The less said about the caravans they'd stayed in the better. A caravan was essentially a metal tent, one used by multiple others before them, and none of whom, Ignis had concluded, knew how to clean up after themselves.

The beds in the Three Z's were at least clean. Ignis had made sure of it by going down to reception and complaining when one of them wasn't. He'd sent Noct and Prompto off to the Crow's Nest with a subtle suggestion that they might occupy themselves with the Justice Monsters Five machine for a couple of hours, which left Ignis alone with Gladio.

Gladio, who was looking at him with his arms crossed over his immense chest, and a slightly cocky smirk on his face. “You're not subtle, you know,” he said.

“That's what you think,” Ignis told him. “Now they're going to think we're up to something, so they're going to come creeping back at some reasonable time, instead of still being on that godsforsaken machine until dawn unless I go and fetch them.”

Gladio laughed at the statement, mirth brightening his eyes, and his grin splitting his face, chasing away the serious looking Shield of the Future King and leaving behind the 23 year old Ignis sometimes thought they'd both forgotten they were. “You hope,” he said. Then Gladio was reaching out, catching Ignis's upper arm with his hand and drawing him closer. “But since we've got the place to ourselves,” he said.

Ignis gently, but definitely, peeled his arm from Gladio's hand, giving the man a half second to look confused before he said, “Take off your jacket and sit on the bed.”

Gladio's eyebrows lifted for his hairline, and another grin split his face. “Playing it like that, are we?”

Ignis shrugged his own jacket off. “Hardly,” he replied. “If you think I didn't see that coeurl get you, you're underestimating my perceptiveness.”

The humour slipped away from Gladio's face. “I'm fine,” he answered. “It was just a scratch. The potions saw to it.”

“I still want to check.” He looked up, into amber eyes that were warm and dark in the terrible lighting of the hotel room, and asked, “Please?”

Gladio sighed, and settled himself on the end of the bed before he slipped his jacket off his shoulders. Ignis slid up onto his knees behind him, and looked. When he'd seen Gladio knocked onto his face by the coeurl his heart had been in his throat. His heart was in his throat with every fight, if Ignis was honest. There was so much at stake in all of them. Noct was improving, of course, they all were. If they'd encountered a coeurl when they'd first ventured from Insomnia's borders they'd have been dead before learning of the betrayal at the treaty signing. They'd survived this one, and would doubtless cease to find them challenging soon enough. Every day they grew stronger, both as individuals, and as a team.

Still, the pale lines down Gladio's back, where one huge paw had torn his back apart and magic had restitched it, were a reminder of how close they had so often come to losing what mattered most. Ignis sighed. “Right through your tattoo,” he said, softly.

Gladio made an unhappy noise. “It's not going to ruin it is it?” he asked, turning to look at Ignis out of the corner of his eye, over his shoulder.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Ignis replied. Curative magic wasn't easy; it was the hardest of all the types, and the most draining to use, but Ignis had long mastered the trick of a regenerative spell. He called one up to his hand now, the magic swirling green and sparkling over his gloved skin, and he pressed it against Gladio's mostly healed wound.

Gladio was a good patient, at least. He kept still, and importantly, silent while Ignis worked, pouring that little bit of extra magic into the damaged skin, giving it the boost it needed to heal completely. The coeurl's paw had been as big as Gladio's shoulder, and the lines its claws had drawn were long, and widely spaced.

After twenty minutes the discoloured claw lines had faded down until it looked like someone had drawn a pencil over Gladio's back. That too would be gone by morning, and Ignis let the magic settle back inside himself with a sigh.

“Done?” Gladio asked, not moving an inch.

Ignis gave a nod, and then a murmur of confirmation as he adjusted his glasses, feeling the bone deep exhaustion of having used magic for so long settling over him. He needed a coffee, or six. “I do wish you wouldn't take such brutal injuries,” he murmured.

Gladio turned around, twisting and shifting his position so he was turned towards Ignis. “Rather me than you,” he answered. “You look done in.”

Ignis gave him a wan smile. “I'll be fine by morning. Magic is tiring to create.” That, Ignis knew, was probably Noct's excuse, but you got nowhere by giving in to it.

A warm hand settled on his hip, and Ignis looked up at Gladio, who was giving him a soft smile that lent a gentle warmth to his eyes. “You should let us take care of you sometimes, you know.”

Ignis returned Gladio's warm smile with one of his own. “You take perfectly good care of me when you have a mind to.”

Gladio gave a soft grunt of agreement. “So let me return the favour,” he said, before leaning forward. Ignis closed his eyes as Gladio's lips pressed against his in a deceptively gently kiss, mere lips against lips and all the sweeter for the soft sentiment behind it.

“I suppose,” he said, quietly, “if the other two think we're up to something anyway?”

Gladio chuckled, and agreed, “Might as well let 'em be right, for once.” He leaned forward again, coiling his hands around Ignis and holding him close to Gladio's own warmth, and Ignis relaxed, his hand sliding up Gladio's shoulder as his mouth was reclaimed, this time by a gentle but persistent tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> One more to go!
> 
> Thank you to everyone that has been commenting and kudos-ing so far. The next one is a _bit of a doozy_ to end the week.
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/atropaazraelle), where you will also shortly find my Ignis fluff week entries, fic recs, and me flailing like an idiot.


End file.
